Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)
by conventgirlvampire
Summary: The world has ended and nature has restaked her claim. Grimms, giant man-eating creatures that look like wolves, stalk the lands and few have survived. Santana, Rachel and Quinn struggle in the aftermath just to make it count in the end.


**Title:** Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)

**Characters/Pairings:** Pezberry, Faberry, FaPezBerry.

**Chapter:** 1

**Word Count:** 2,724

**Spoilers: **Up to season 4, I guess.

**Summary:** The world has ended and nature has restaked her claim. Grimms, giant man-eating creatures that look like wolves, stalk the lands and few have survived. Santana, Rachel and Quinn struggle in the aftermath just to make it count in the end.

**A/N: **Originally, this was supposed to be a oneshot but I decided to have at least two more chapters after this. And this is me coming back slowly.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own it. Never did. It's as depressing to me Mufasa's death. Title from Emily Browning's cover of _Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)_by The Eurythmics.

* * *

**Chapter One**

**Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)**

_Sweet dreams are made of this  
Who am I to disagree?  
Travel the world and the seven seas  
Everybody's looking for something  
Some of them want to use you  
Some of them want to get used by you  
Some of them want to abuse you  
Some of them want to be abused_

* * *

She steps lightly, slowly, hoping not to attract any attention. She knows that she should hurry but she has to be careful. The burden she carries is too precious to lose and she does not want to think about how long it has taken for them to get this far, only to have to begin all over again.

Closing her eyes as the sword on her back hits her thighs, she pauses to readjust it before moving once again. Too much time outside could lead to her demise and she is not going to risk that, not now when Rachel is waiting for her to come back with the box in her pack.

A wailing sound reaches her ears and she scrunches down behind a giant tree, hoping that the cloying, flowery scent it emanates will mask her own. If they find her, they will tear her to pieces. She knows this from experience, knows exactly what they are capable of and all she can feel now as she clutches at her knees, curling ever closer into herself, is this terrible fear that she hates feeling but cannot rid herself of.

She waits and waits and waits until she is sure that they are gone and only then, when what seems like hours but, in reality, is only a few minutes pass, does she stand, unsheathing the sword as she moves even more slowly now. She remembers when she acquired it, remembers breaking into the old Japanese guy's house on her block to get to him, only to realise that he was too wounded to help. He had given it to her then, instructing her to cut off his head as he pushed the knife deeper into his stomach.

She dreams of him still, only this time he is in the old samurai armour she used to look at sometimes when she stopped by to make sure that he was still alive and well on her way to her abuela's. Lima Heights Adjacent was not a pleasant place to live in by any stretch of the imagination, but they took care of their own and he had always been her favourite out of all the old geezers that lived there and were not related to her.

She shakes off all thoughts of him and the past. Time passes quickly, too quickly, and she is moving too slowly but she cannot help it, needing to avoid detection before those creatures can find her, only speeding up when she knows that she has crossed the border into their territory.

When she gets to their building, an old run down barracks with poor lighting and bad water, Rachel is waiting for her. The smaller girl pulls her in past the door, shutting it quickly before wrapping her arms around her in the dark. In the past, she would have pushed her away, maybe threatened her a bit too for good measure, but this is not the past and now she revels in the contact.

"Thank God you're safe Santana," Rachel mutters when she hugs her back, weary of the injuries she has forced herself to push through. "I didn't know what to think if…"

Rachel trails off but Santana does not need the other girl's words to know what she was thinking. How often has she thought the same thing when Rachel goes scavenging for something to sustain them? How often does she worry that one day she will return only to find that they have broken in somehow and wreaked havoc in the only home she has left?

Still, she is quick to reassure her with a squeeze, needing to feel Rachel in her arms as much as the other girl needs to feel her. There is nothing that will stop her from coming back, nothing that will keep her from her girl. She had long ago decided this and she is determined to keep that promise.

"How's Q?" she asks when they finally pull away for each other. "Still kicking up a fuss?"

Rachel shakes her head. "She's sleeping. When she wakes up, I'll see what I can do to help her but, not now. Now, I just…"

She understands that too and takes Rachel's hand as she moves past her to the room that they share. Later, they will go to Quinn together but, for now, they need each other, need to know that there is something out there for them both other than this constant cycle of death and destruction. For now, she just wants to feel.

* * *

She watches stoically as Rachel lifts Quinn's torso a little to treat her. It has been a few years since high school but she can still remember the tension between the two, having to tamp down on the jealousy she feels whenever she sees them too often for comfort. Rachel loves her. She knows this deeply but, sometimes, she wonders what would have happened if Quinn had captured her heart instead.

She forces the jealousy down and glances at the blade she is sharpening for a moment before looking at Quinn again. She has nothing against the girl, not now that their rivalry is long gone, a deep friendship forged in blood and tears having replaced it instead, so Santana knows that she should not feel jealous. Especially not now when Quinn is suffering because of her mistakes.

"Don't blame yourself," Quinn says without looking at her, too busy trying not to react to the pain she must feel as Rachel changes her bandages. "I don't blame you so don't do that to yourself. Not now, when you're the only one who can actually do anything anymore."

"Q…"

"No. You may have been the one stuck out there but I was the one who decided to go get you. I was the one who risked my neck in the dead of night to find you and bring you back."

"Exactly. If I wasn't out there then maybe-"

"Maybe nothing. We both know that Sue's training was already brutal enough back in high school that we could survive anything and I should have trusted that. I should have trusted that you would not have gotten yourself killed like that. Not when you're smarter than that."

"Still…"

"Enough."

She looks at Rachel, surprised to find the girl glaring at her, her expression defiant, almost angry. It makes her flinch because she remembers that look all too well, remembers the way it had been directed at her the day Brittany had died.

"You are not going to do this, not here and not now. We need you Santana. _I_ need you and I don't care if it was your fault's or Quinn's that this happened. As far as I'm concerned, everything's over and done with and I can't have you out there all the time, risking your life because you feel guilty for something that was not in your control. When you go out there, I need you to come back to me, Tana. I need you to stay alive because without you I don't think I can go on."

"You can…"

Rachel shook her head forcefully, her expression mirrored on Quinn's face.

"You're the one who brought us together, the one who saved everyone she could. The rest of us could not have made it as far as we did for as long as we did without you. I wouldn't have made it and Quinn wouldn't either."

"Q could survive on her own if she had to. In fact, if it wasn't for me she wouldn't even be like this."

"You're right S," Quinn said as she struggled to sit up. "You know what I would have been instead? Dead. You saved my life when you brought me back here instead of letting them have me. You're worth more alive."

"Am I?"

"Yes, you are, so you better get your ass up and start being the old Santana Lopez again, not this new, wussy version of yourself."

She bristles at being called a wuss but she lets it pass. She knows that Quinn is right, of course. Fucking Fabray is always right and that is why she loves her enough to want to keep her alive when, in reality, she does not have to. She could have just left her there, could have lied and told Rachel that Quinn was already dead, but she did not. Instead, she had carried the girl all the way back to their current home, something inside of her needing to keep her alive.

She presses that memory down, not wanting to think about it, much less remember that day. There is too much blood on her hands, too much red in her ledger, for her to be comfortable remembering the sight of the girl she once called captain nearly lifeless because of _her _mistake. Still, if they want her to drop it, she will, even if it is just in front of them.

Before she can say anything, though, there is a crash and the chill that spreads through her spine whenever she hears _them_. The howls are too close, too loud for her to dismiss them and all her fears are realised when she steps into the hallway and sees them through the open doors, jaws gaping wide, shining canines and saliva greeting her as they greet her with a mockery of a smile, feral and hungry.

Time to get to work again, she thinks as she straps her sword onto her back and approaches the door. With one last glance behind her at Rachel's pale face, she steps into the cool night.

* * *

Santana circles it calmly, never letting their eye contact break. She knows that doing so has more than just the possibility of being fatal but she does not have a solid battle plan, not yet. So, staring at the fucker is the only thing she can do, really; the only thing she knows to do.

Something breaks behind her but she dares not turn to see what it is, dares not hope that it is something innocent like her stepping on a piece of wood. Those are the sounds of bones breaking, human bones that once belonged to her friends but had been picked clean over time. She tries not to cringe at it, tries not to show her disgust and the fear plaguing her that her bones will be next.

She backs up a little, almost tripping but correcting her footwork at the last minute, her back protesting at the movement. She should not be here, should not be putting herself through this when she has yet to even be treated, but she has no choice. These things, these wolf-like creatures that hunt them, are smarter than they look and the nightmare will never be over, not now that there are so few people left to stand against them in their area.

She thinks back to the last they had heard from Sam and Puck, thinks back to their abandonment after Finn's death. They had left them, too much of a coward the both of them, to face the creatures - the Grimms, she remembers Rachel calling them - that were circling their territory back in Ohio. Before their departure, she remembers Sam telling her that the colonies in South America and in Britain were safer, that they were better for them in the long run.

She had not wanted to believe them at the time but now she wonders if they had been right, if they had the better idea than the three of them. After all, Alaska was a hotbed for the creatures and she should not have expected any less when they had arrived.

The Grimm attacks, breaking through her train of thought, and she is forced to jump to her right to avoid the paw heading her way. She curses as it grazes her side, just barely opening the skin. Still, it burns and breaks through her resistance as her body protests this new injury being added to the already severe ones restricting her.

A voice calls her name but she pays it no attention. Rachel and Quinn will be alright so long as they stay inside and she will not be the one to draw them out, will not be the one to expose them to this monster.

She stops backing away and draws her sword, careful to grip it in both hands in an effort to gain more control and power. She does not know if this is actually true but it feels like it and she needs that reassurance right now. The fear is beginning to overwhelm her and she cannot afford to let that happen just yet.

Lunging forward, she slashes at the paw that had wounded her, the blade slicing through fur, skin and muscle. She does not get very far, her own muscles protesting after a few seconds, but it is enough to scent the air with the creature's blood. Her aim is to distract the others from the building, not to kill, not yet.

Over and over again, she repeats this process of evasion and attack, rendering the Grimm's paw and parts of its body striped with dark blood and matted fur. Others are attracted but not enough, never enough and her body is wearing out quickly, her energy flagging dangerously low as she tries and fails to get all of them away from Quinn and Rachel.

In the end, she has no choice but to run, no choice but to put so much distance between herself and the other two that the Grimms will never think to attack them next, hoping that they will follow her, the prospect of readily available meat more appealing than having to find a way inside. She utters a silent plea for Rachel's forgiveness as she moves but she does not stop, all too aware oft he dangers of letting them catch her before she can get to an area that will give _her_ the advantage in battle.

She does not know how long she has been running when her feet give way and she crashes to the ground, only that she does not know where she is. Red eyes surround her and she is tempted to lay there and let them get to her. Only, she remembers Rachel, remembers how much the other girl needs her, how much she loves her, and she finds that she cannot stay down for long.

She is Santana Lopez and no overgrown dog is going to get the best of her.

At least, that is what she tells herself as she presses down on the sword in order to remain standing. Truthfully, they might have a better chance at winning than she does.

"Come at me fuckers!" she screams into the night. "Just come at me!"

Her back aches. Blood courses down her side. Her vision swims. Her breath stalls.

The monstrous Grimm from before steps out of the shadow of the trees and sizes her up. There is something quite intelligent within its eyes and all she can think as they face off is that, if this is the end, she wants that one to be her killer. She would rather be eaten by something that can appreciate her than by some mindless follower.

They circle each other again, the same game being played with each other over and over again until she can no longer think beyond their little clearing. There is just her and him - for surely, the Grimm is male. There is just her and this powerful creature lusting after her blood.

She snorts once in disbelief. If this was tv, it would be some sort of twisted beauty and the beast kind of thing where she kisses it in the end and it becomes a man or whatever. Only, this is not tv. The beast in front of her was never human and never will be and her? She prefers girls, human girls.

The Grimm stops and she does too. Only one of them will survive. She knows that. Which one is what she does not know and she does not really care at the moment. All she knows is that she has to stop it before it can hurt Rachel and Quinn.

It lunges.

She attacks.


End file.
